Ethical Hacking and Security

Ethical hacking, or authorized virtual attacks on information systems designed to uncover vulnerabilities, speaks to Chinese war authority Sun Tzu’s ancient aphorism about understanding one’s enemy. “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle,” he said.

Because having insights into the tactics and strategies of one’s opposition is such an effective means to defend against them, ethical hacking methodologies have been working their way into more and more IT security training and certification programs. One of these is the International Council of E-Commerce Consultants’ (EC-Council) Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) credential. In this month’s Security community feature, Sanjay Bavisi and Sangeetha Thomas of the EC-Council discuss the CEH program as well as ethical hacking in general. Click here to find out more about both.